Cornerstone Research Noted as ‘Second to None’ in Chambers Litigation Support Guide 2025

Justin McCrary

Paul J. Evanson Professor of Law,
Columbia Law School;
Senior Advisor, Cornerstone Research

Justin McCrary is a leading expert on statistical methods and economic modeling, with a focus on antitrust and competition, labor, and consumer product matters. Professor McCrary has testified on class certification, antitrust, labor, and statistics issues. His wide-ranging experience covers numerous industries, such as automotive, commodities, technology, healthcare, life sciences, finance, telecommunications, and retail.

Antitrust and competition

Professor McCrary testifies in complex antitrust and competition matters in various industries. His experience includes:

• In a significant matter in a high-tech industry, he addressed allegations of a conspiracy to fix prices and also analyzed and rebutted an opposing expert’s damages model. In another matter, he analyzed damages resulting from alleged collusion among pharmacies.
• On behalf of a global food and agriculture corporation, Professor McCrary evaluated an alleged conspiracy to manipulate wheat futures and options contracts.
• Professor McCrary has experience in multiple large and complex antitrust class actions involving financial markets. For example, he addressed statistical sampling of alleged cartel communications in In re Foreign Exchange Benchmark Rates Antitrust Litigation.
• Professor McCrary rebutted damages in a case alleging that a large software provider maintained its monopoly position through anticompetitive practices, including exclusionary contracting. The client prevailed in a confidential arbitration proceeding.
• Professor McCrary has provided testimony in antitrust matters involving intellectual property. For example, in Palm Beach Tanning Inc. et al. v. Sunless Inc., an antitrust counterclaim filed in response to a trademark case, he analyzed Section 1 and 2 tying allegations and issues related to the Robinson-Patman Act.
• In the telecommunications industry, Professor McCrary served as a consulting expert for the U.S. Department of Justice in its review of AT&T’s acquisition of T-Mobile.

Labor

Professor McCrary has wide-ranging labor markets expertise. His representative experience includes:

• Professor McCrary provided testimony in two seminal no-poach litigation matters involving the McDonald’s and Jimmy John’s franchises. In both matters, he analyzed the potential procompetitive benefits of the challenged clauses and opined on class certification issues. Class certification was denied in both cases, with both U.S. district court judges relying on Professor McCrary’s analyses in their opinions.
• Professor McCrary testified on class certification issues in a high-profile gender discrimination case focused on pay and promotion outcomes at a large U.S. retailer. The judge subsequently denied certification of the plaintiffs’ proposed class.
• Defense counsel retained Professor McCrary to analyze merits and damages issues in Morgan et al. v. U.S. Soccer Federation Inc., a gender pay discrimination class action. Citing Professor McCrary’s expert report in his order, the judge ruled in favor of the defendant’s motion for summary judgment.
• Defense counsel in Robinson et al. v. Jackson Hewitt Inc. and Tax Services of America retained Professor McCrary to analyze allegations that franchise no-poaching agreements restricted mobility and suppressed compensation.

Consumer fraud and product liability

Professor McCrary has testified in multiple matters alleging product liability, false advertising, and breach of contract. For example, in Beaty v. Ford Motor Company, a product liability matter involving alleged automotive defects, he provided class certification and damages rebuttal testimony.

Serving as an expert in high-profile consumer class actions, Professor McCrary has conducted empirical analyses and provided testimony on issues related to causation, liability, and damages. He has also rebutted damages models using a variety of empirical techniques, including conjoint analysis and hedonic regressions.

Statistical methods and analysis

The founding director of the Social Sciences Data Laboratory (D-Lab) at the University of California, Berkeley, Professor McCrary is an authority on high-performance computing and statistical techniques.

He has testified on sampling, probability theory, and statistical methods. In the closely watched matter, In Re Twitter Inc. v. Elon Musk et al., he was retained to address allegations regarding the statistical sampling methods employed by Twitter in analyzing spam and fake accounts.

Professor McCrary has examined the statistical evidence for healthcare providers’ alleged overbilling of Medicare in both government audit and False Claims Act (FCA) matters. He also has substantial experience with mortgage-backed securities matters, including rebuttals to analyses invoking matching estimators.

Research and teaching

Professor McCrary publishes research on econometric methods, including on measuring damages in antitrust litigation. In addition, his scholarship covers a wide range of topics, including employment discrimination, high-frequency trading, financial market structure, and monetary policy. A prolific author and coauthor, his work has appeared in leading journals, including the American Economic Review, the Journal of Econometrics, and the Review of Economics and Statistics. Professor McCrary is a faculty research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).

Before joining Columbia University, Professor McCrary taught at the School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley.

Christine A. Parlour

Sylvan C. Coleman Chair in Finance and Accounting,
Haas School of Business,
University of California, Berkeley

Christine A. Parlour is a finance expert who focuses on market microstructure, limit order markets, cryptocurrencies, FinTech, and payment systems. Professor Parlour provides expert testimony on a range of institutionally complex topics involving financial markets, institutions, market manipulation, cryptocurrency, and regulation. She is the former president of the Western Finance Association and a former member of the Nasdaq Economic Advisory Board. She has also served as visiting economist at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

For more than twenty years, Professor Parlour has researched issues related to the economics of financial exchanges. She specializes in financial markets, including equity markets, debt markets, and cryptocurrencies. In equity markets, she has examined price dynamics, competition for order flow, payment for order flow, and informed trading. Her research on cryptocurrencies addresses the effect of Central Bank Digital Currency on banking system stability, the costs of settlement on the Bitcoin Ledger, and how initial coin offerings (ICOs) differ from traditional funding.

Widely published, Professor Parlour’s award-winning research has appeared in leading finance and economics journals, including the American Economic Review, the Review of Financial Studies, the Journal of Finance, and the Journal of Financial Economics. She is an editor at the Review of Finance; associate editor of the Journal of Financial Markets, the Journal of Financial Intermediation, and the Journal of Financial Services Research; and a former associate editor of Management Science and the Journal of Finance.

Professor Parlour has taught courses in investment analysis, FinTech, auctions and microstructure, and capital markets. She is a winner of the Haas School’s Earl F. Cheit Award for Excellence in Teaching.

She has held visiting academic appointments at INSEAD, the London School of Economics and Politics, and Paris Dauphine University. Professor Parlour is a past president of the Finance Theory Group.

Liam Colley

Senior Vice President

Liam Colley heads Cornerstone Research’s European competition practice. Mr. Colley is a testifying economics expert specializing in competition, antitrust damages, and economic regulation issues. He has more than twenty-five years of experience as a consultant and testifying expert. His experience includes multiple high-profile matters before U.K. and European Union courts and competition regulators. Citing the “unassailable quality of his work,” Lexology Index (Who’s Who Legal) has named Mr. Colley a leading competition economist, as well as a Thought Leader and Global Leader in the competition field.

Antitrust and competition

Mr. Colley has consulted on a range of competition matters before the European Commission, national competition authorities, regulators, and courts. His expertise includes matters arising in automotive; financial services; insurance; technology, media, and telecom (TMT); and transportation. He has supported clients on numerous antitrust investigations and market inquiries. In addition, Mr. Colley has worked on multiple mergers, particularly on matters involving efficiencies and failing firm defenses.

Antitrust damages

Mr. Colley has wide experience estimating damages that arise from breaches of competition rules. In cartel damages matters, he has prepared numerous expert reports in the context of high court litigation, arbitration, mediation, and settlement negotiations. He has addressed class action issues and worked on many stand-alone and follow-on actions in abuse of dominance cases.

Mr. Colley has served as a testifying expert before the U.K. High Court and the U.K. Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) on both antitrust damages matters and regulatory appeals.

Mr. Colley publishes and speaks widely on competition and damages issues. Before joining Cornerstone Research, for many years he led the global economics practice of a major professional consulting firm.